CENTRE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION STUDIES - CHES (CZ)

Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES) is the public research institution dealing with research about higher education (HE). CHES has over 15 employees. The main domains of current research are: implementation of Bologna process priorities with the focus on quality assurance, qualification framework, programme and institutional diversification, massification of HE and its impacts, issues of HE staff and students, collaboration of higher education institutions (HEIs) with external partners, regional development and connected issues, new methods of teaching and learning (using ICT in education). CHES collaborates with HEIs (public and private) and offer for them consultation, information, sociological surveys and various services focusing namely on quality assurance. CHES was the national coordinator of the multi-country OECD project Thematic Review of Tertiary Education (2004-2008) and published the Czech Country Background Report. It was the international coordinator of the project Identifying barriers in promoting European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance at institutional level (IBAR) supported from Lifelong Learning Programme (2001-2013) and participated in the project „Investments on joint and open R&D programs and analysis of their economic impact” supported by the European Commission. It has also participated in various national project – it was partner of the project supported by the Czech Science Foundation „Ethnography of Czech HEIs‘ departments“ and it has coordinated the national project focused on support of technology and science oriented studies funded from the European Structural Funds. Currently CHES is participating in the project Enhancing capacities in implementation of institutional quality assurance system and typology using Bologna process principles (IQAT, 2016-2017) - www.project-iqat.eu. CHES has developed international collaboration with similar research institutions (for example CHEPS - NL, CIPES-PT), its employees are members of The European Higher Education Society, Consortium of Higher Education Researchers and they use the international contacts in its research work. CHES organizes since 2010 regularly the international conference DisCo about using ICT in education (since 2015 the DisCo proceedings are indexed in Thomson Web of Science) www.disconference.eu